Men in Space Read Free Page A

what?” asks Ilievski, shrugging. “They’re always filming licence plates round here. Idiots.”
    “Why?” says Anton. “I’d have thought it was a sound way of identifying …”
    “Lesson one,” Ilievski announces, holding up his finger. “Mila: what’s the first thing you do to a stolen car?”
    “Change the plates, Comrade,” Mila answers, in a high voice.
    “Have a star, young pioneer.”
    “But,” Milachkov steps out of character now, “they’re usually in uniform when they film here.”
    Ili shrugs. “Maybe today’s the day they get their costumes washed.”
    “I know a joke,” says Anton. “There’s this ship, this naval, say, destroyer, and it’s been at sea for maybe seven, eight months, and the men on it, the sailors, are all filthy, and theyall want nothing more than just to take a bath and put on some fresh clothes. So one day the captain gathers them all together and says: ‘Men! I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you’re all going to get a change of clothes.’ And the sailors all cheer. And the captain says: ‘The bad news is that you’re changing with him, you’re changing with him, you’re …’ ”
    It’s easy. Milachkov’s dropped his case, he’s laughing so much. Ilievski’s thrown the rag onto the ground. The Czech mechanic stoops to pick it up, smiling politely, looking awkward. He must be in his early twenties. Anton translates the joke into Czech for him; he chuckles slightly at it – as though he’d been served cold leftovers. Milachkov says:
    “Sparta game this Saturday?”
    “What?” Anton asks, then: “Oh, yes. Against Košice. Right. Let’s go together.”
    “Meet you in Bar Nine on Újezd beforehand. Half-past one.”
    “
Perfektní
.”
    Ilievski’s started walking onto Libeňský Island. He whistles to Rambo; Anton jogs along to catch him up. The road is unpaved, bordered on one side by corrugated iron fencing which is listing with the gradient of the slope. Behind the fence, a few bare birch trees. Rambo runs back towards Ilievski and then turns around and scouts ahead of them, sniffing at tufts of grass and pools of oily water, shattering with his paw the thin sheets of ice resting on their surfaces.
    “I love bright days in winter.” Ili’s looking up into the clear-blue sky. “Look, Anton: there’s the moon already.”
    He stops, clasps his hand around Anton’s shoulder – firmly, so the fingers dig into the bone – and turns him round. The moon is hovering above the birch trees two thirds full, its surface faint and silvery-blue.
    “That only ever happens in the winter.” Ilievski releasesAnton as he says this; they move on. “It’s the way the earth is facing. Tilted back, away from the sun. We wouldn’t see that if we were in, for example, Australia.”
    “I like it too,” says Anton. “The moon out when it’s still light. You don’t know if it’s day or night.” There’s a song with that phrase, but in English.
Don’t know if it’s …
Dylan? No, Hendrix. For the next few metres, the lyrics play through Anton’s mind, a muted soundtrack:
Excuse me, while I kiss the sky …
They’ve come to a house set off the road. One storey, whitewashed plaster walls. Must have been built in the Fifties, Sixties, pretty typical suburban architecture – only its front wall, the north-facing one, has been replaced by sheets of glass. As they clear the house, a lawn drifts into view. On the lawn, spread all across it, sculptures stand, sit, lie. Some of them, still intact, show soldiers waving flags as they advance heroically across invisible battlefields, or overalled men and women holding aloft hammers and sickles, as though displaying them to some crowd long since dispersed. Others, fallen, show workers bending over lathes or blowing glass through long, trumpet-like tubes that nestle in the grass. Some are broken: there’s a gymnast swinging round the handles of a pommel horse, but his arms